The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like their father's, made out of brown denims by the mother's never-resting hands—hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if men had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon the seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no perfume, no respite from toil and care.
She thought of the children she saw in the town,—children of the merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker suits, the girls in dainty white dresses,—and a vengeful bitterness sprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired and listless to do more.
"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging at her dress.
Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of cottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her—she could not tell where.
"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.
"I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone."
Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness! The wind sang in her ears; the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly ships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; the birds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed and clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man in every line of her face.
But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn down through the grass.
"O ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned in."